Scans Unveil Secrets of the World's Oldest Mummies
Scans Unveil Secrets of the World's Oldest Mummies
These 7,000-year-old mummies just had an unusual check-up.
Dec 29, 2016 04:38 PM ET
BY AFP
More than 7,000 years after they were embalmed by the Chinchorro people, an ancient civilization in modern-day Chile and Peru, 15 mummies were taken to a Santiago clinic last week to undergo DNA analysis and computerized tomography scans.
The Chinchorro were a hunting and fishing people who lived from 10,000 to 3,400 B.C. on the Pacific coast of South America, at the edge of the Atacama desert.
They were among the first people in the world to mummify their dead. Their mummies date back some 7,400 years — at least 2,000 years older than Egypt's.
Now, researchers are hoping to use modern medical technology to reconstruct what they looked like in life, decode their genes and better understand the mysteries of this ancient civilization.
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